“Why Am I In A Bad Mood?” The 3 Most Frequent Reasons
Sudden mood swings can be a source of discomfort that affects all aspects of our lives They facilitate the emergence of arguments, are distracting and, of course, are unpleasant for those who experience them directly.
Furthermore, an added factor of discomfort is the fact of not knowing very well where the bad mood comes from. When someone talks about the bad face we have in those situations, The answers we give in this regard are, almost always, insufficient For example, if someone complains because we got angry when they made a simple request, we will probably respond with something like, “You’re always asking me for help.”
Despite the little logic that seems to exist in the reasons why someone thinks they get angry when they are in a bad mood, the truth is that there are real factors that explain a good part of these emotional states. Our mind is not independent of the body, so both the material state of our nervous system and our habits have effects on the way we think and feel. These that you will see below are the most important influencing factors.
1. Lack of sleep
Lack of sleep has a very important influence on how we think and how we feel. When we sleep little or with frequent interruptions, Our brain does not fully recover, and that means it has to deal with day-to-day tasks with very limited resources and in a bad way. It must be taken into account that this set of organs is always active, and therefore is exposed to great wear and tear. The moments in which we sleep are stages in which this activation becomes of another type, which makes the maintenance and recovery of these cellular tissues possible.
The result of this is, of course, that we tend to think worse and have great difficulty managing our attention well. Furthermore, this makes us frustrated and feel bad, which in turn makes it easier for us to reach the threshold of a bad mood very quickly By the time the day comes when someone asks us for something, we have already experienced a number of small daily failures, and that is why we react poorly to the need to put our brains to work again.
Thus, complaints are the way in which we try to turn into reasonable arguments something that is actually a cry for help, a request for more time to rest.
2. Stress maintained for a long time
Stress is, at the same time, the perfect breeding ground for bad moods to appear.
In fact, it is rare for these levels of anxiety maintained for days to be experienced with a good face, as if this psychological discomfort were an edifying sacrifice that is assumed in favor of a greater good. It almost always results in tantrums and leads us to adopt a more cynical and pessimistic style of thinking Somehow, we remain biased and interpret everything in a negative way.
The reason for this is very similar to the case of lack of sleep. Continued stress is a consequence of a neuroendocrine system that needs to rest and “disengage” from a series of tasks and ideas that capture our focus of attention for too long, whether we want it or not. This causes our thinking to go into a loop, a phenomenon known as rumination
There is a type of bad mood that is deeper and less circumstantial than that generated by stress and lack of sleep: the one that is part of our own philosophy of life, of the way in which we have learned to interpret our experiences
This is what from the clinical psychology of the cognitive-behavioral current It is addressed through what is known as cognitive restructuring The idea is to modify the way we interpret reality consciously or unconsciously.
Normally, people with this type of bad mood read their lives through a mental scheme that predisposes them towards pessimism. It is their custom, just like brushing their teeth every morning or having toast with jam for breakfast.
For example, their achievements will always be interpreted as the result of luck or the help of others, while failures will be understood as a consequence of one’s true limitations. That is, the good will be attributed to external factors, and the bad will be attributed to the essence of oneself, something that (theoretically) cannot be changed. This process is influenced by what is known as the “locus of control”: the way in which we attribute what happens to us to personal or external characteristics
Change habits
This type of cause of bad mood is the most difficult to change, because it requires making a commitment to personal change in the medium and long term (although bad mood caused by lack of sleep can also cause a lot of war if it is the result of a sleep disorder. ). Usually, This vital pessimism cannot be solved just by reading books but it is necessary to change one’s own habits and ways of doing things.
So, to move beyond “why am I in a bad mood?” When it comes to “why do I feel so good if I’m not especially lucky?” the solution is, paradoxically, to start believing that we are lucky because we really see that there are no reasons to think otherwise. Getting rid of artificial worries, feeling motivated and transforming our lives into exciting projects are a part of this plan. The other part, of course, is having the basic needs to live with dignity, which will allow us to have the necessary autonomy to direct our actions to actions that pursue authentic objectives.
